In the Libby case, no one remembers what happened

The Hill ^ | 02/01/07 | Byron York

[Enchante]

Defense attorneys are shredding the credibility of Miller, Grenier, et al. They all turn out to have extremely selective and fallible memories, which are then suddenly refreshed by some kind of "recovered memory" process which relies upon inferring what they later think must have happened before - even though they had no memory of certain events and statements when testifying to the Grand Jury, etc.

If this case isn't now infused with "reasonable doubt" then the term has no meaning.

[BigSkyFreeper]

A year ago, all these leftwinged hacks had a story to tell and were singing like little birdies goin' tweet-tweet-tweet.

[mkjessup]

The entire trial is degenerating into an utter farce.

The guy who should be on trial (that fat slob Armitage) is waddling around somewhere probably working on a book deal, while I. Lewis Libby is finding out how Ray Donovan felt (Reagan's Labor Secretary) when he was persecuted by an overzealous prosecutor (and acquitted).

My tag line says it all.

[Dog]

Remember this is a DC jury...

[CFC__VRWC]

Remember this is a DC jury...

And that is Fitzfong's (and the DBM's) only hope.

[ErnBatavia]

(and acquitted).

And I'm starting to get the definite feeling that Libby will NOT be acquitted...the fix is in.

[bjc]

When the prosecution rests, assuming that the next few witnesses are no more compelling, can the defense ask for a directed verdict or a dismissal? To date, there appears little to suggest that the prosecution can prove its case.

[Howlin]

Scooter Ping!!!

[Laverne]

From firedoglake (who has done a great job capturing what was said in the court; but its a very liberal site so stay away from the comments section):

---

Wells: we could start on Wednesday

Walton" if Govt will start Monday, I'd ask you start right away.

Jeffress: We're going to call Abramson from NYT, I think it'd be more convenient if we could know definitely tomorrow.

Wells: a rule 29 conversation, the July 12 conversation, given the way she testified, we're going to take the position that that prong of obstruction cannot stand.

---

So next week, Team Libby will move for some of the charges to be dismissed. I am not a lawyer, but what I read on other sites, says a rule 29 is for dismissal of a charge.

[tacticalogic]

"I'd say, 'Gee, I just don't remember what happened back then', and they won't be able to indict me for perjury and that, maybe, that's the principal thing that I've learned in four years...I just intend to rely on that failure of memory."

former Clinton White House counsel Charles Ruff

[Enchante]

“I was going over it and over and over in my mind,” he told the jury

Yet another instance of why Fitz-dork is on thin ice and why Judge Walton is outrageous for not permitting expert testimony of a memory expert for the defense. If prosecution witnesses are permitted to provide such dubious "recovered memories" years after the fact and contrary to what they previously testified to under oath, then surely the defense should be allowed to provide expert testimony on the many aspects of unreliability in memory, both as pertains to Scooter Libby and also the witnesses.

fwiw, these issues are very different from when the Clintonistas testified to no memory at all of matters that had obviously been of great concern and preoccupation to them over long periods of time. How many people can recall the specific sequence of appointments they had months ago in a period of a few days or weeks? Libby should have taken the CLintonista "I do not recall" line -- he would have been actually justified in doing so, since recalling the sequence of "he said, she said" months after the fact is much more unreliable than simply recalling whether you ever knew about, e.g., the Whitewater cover-up.

Amazing what double-standards prevail among liberal legal eagles and MSM frauds.

[mkjessup]

And I'm starting to get the definite feeling that Libby will NOT be acquitted...the fix is in.

I hope you're wrong.

However, IF Libby is convicted, I would be very surprised if Vice President Dick Cheney did not strongly urge the President to issue a pardon for Libby ASAP, not just before Bush leaves office on January 20, 2009, but literally within days of any conviction.

Because if there is one person President Bush does NOT want unhappy, it is his Vice President.

Do NOT underestimate the ability of Dick Cheney to play absolute total hardball if he sees his former Chief of Staff being sacrificed and made a fall guy for some sort of non-crime 'crime', just to placate a mob who wants 'somebody' to hang for whatever it is that the Wilson/Plame gang thinks was done to them.

I hope the jury in this case has the good sense to understand that Fitzgerald not only can't prove his case, he doesn't even have a case to prove!

[Ole Okie]

can the defense ask for a directed verdict or a dismissal?

I believe that is virtually a standard motion after the prosecution presents its case.

Unfortunately, given the seeming inclination of the judge, and the location of the trial (jury pool), I would be surprised if the judge granted a directed verdict or dismissal.

[volunbeer]

I confess that I have not followed this case all that closely because I remember several news reports that Plame's husband had outed her and Plame had outed herself.

Was this correct? If this is correct, why is this case being tried but no special counsel has been appointed to look into the Harry Reid land deal? It sounds like there is already reasonable doubt among key prosecution witnesses.

Where are the investigations into news reporters leaking information that hurts our troops and country?

[JerseyJohn61]

Meanwhile, it still remains uncertain whether Libby's
co-conspirator, an indicted ham sandwich, will take the
stand in its' own defense.

The defense team may not allow this as Fitzgerald packs
plenty of cheese and mustard in his techniques.

Stay tuned! Plenty of pork and baloney yet to come....JJ61

[knuthom]

Out of all these bad memories — lapses involving significant things — how come Lewis Libby is the only guy to be indicted? Perhaps there’s a good reason — we haven’t heard all the evidence yet.

That is what they kept saying about the Duke "rape" case. That the prosecutor must have something more, or he wouldn't have indicted. Wasn't true at Duke, probably not true here.

[Enchante]

"utter farce" -- so true, and the phrase describes what is being revealed about the utter shoddiness of MSM malpractice in how they "researched" (sic) and wrote about this case. Matt Cooper turns out to have just about made up his initial story on Pflamegate, with some help from editorial superiors:


http://justoneminute.typepad.com/


The most amusing witness of the trial was up today, the charming Matt Cooper who with his sloppy notes, shoddy journalism and wry humor brought the old play “Front Page” to life before our eyes. He is the sort of person it would be fun to have dinner with, not the sort of person whose news story should be taken as a bit of serious journalism

Cooper is one of the prosecution’s chief witnesses and surely by now even those who believed in the “Elliott Ness with a law degree” fluff about the prosecutor must be thinking more along the lines of “Get Smart”. In a brutally devastating but gentlemanly low key way the prosecution destroyed a key prosecution witness. The defense showed through an examination of the internal Time emails and documents that the story that brought Matt Cooper into this, “A War on Wilson?” was something concocted out of thin air.

Cooper’s notes showed he claimed as "confirmation" a minute’s long “off the record conversation”( something never to be considered confirmatory) in response to a question about Wilson’s wife playing a role in this Mission. Libby seems in fact—from Cooper’s own notes (haphazard and mistyped as they are) --to have said very much what he said he did: That he heard that too but didn’t even know if that was true.

The key story “A War on

Wilson?” coauthored by Matt begins:

“Has the Bush Administration declared war on a former ambassador who conducted a fact-finding mission to probe possible Iraqi interest in African uranium? Perhaps.”

This war as it turns out existed only in in Matt’s mind . Unless you consider efforts to respond to inquiries about Wilson's claims with the truth to be war or to be as Cooper does “dissing” or “disparaging” Wilson. It seems Libby engaged in perfectly appropriate conduct such as noting all the elements of Wilson's claim were false (Something the bi-partisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee confirmed):Wilson was not sent at the “behest of the vice president; he did not refute, but rather supported, the existing intelligence that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger; his report never made it to the vice president.

But beyond that, we saw how to meet a pressing deadline while on a summer weekend's jaunt at a country club, Matt took a noncommittal off the record response from Libby, pretended Rove’s statement about Plame had been confirmed by Libby and that he had a third confirmation from his colleague Dickerson who still claims that despite what Fleischer testified to the other day, Fleischer did not tell him about Plame but merely said that if he wanted to know who sent Wilson to Africa he should ask the CIA.

Even better, the quote in the article’s account of Libby’s response to Cooper is not in his notes, wasn’t even in his first draft of the story. It was a revision suggested by someone higher up the food chain at the magazine.It clearly fit better into an account which without factual basis claimed there was a “War on Wilson”

Cooper, in defense of this shoddy journalism (the phrase “watching sausage being made” was muttered in the media room and not by the bloggers) reminded us that “The headline ends in a question mark."

Clarice Feldman.

Posted by clarice on January 31, 2007 |

[maica]

You must realize that THE crime was commited in Florida in November 2000 (according to democrats), and all of these events of prosecution were meant from the beginning to reach up to the Oval Office, so that democrats could replay the Farewell Wave of President Nixon on his final Air Force One flight.

It really has very little to do with who what and when of Scooter Libby. It was meant to bring down the Bush Presidency.

[muawiyah]

The defense quite smartly asked to bring in a "memory expert" knowing the court would reject that request.

This pretty well stops Fitzgerald from bringing in a "memory expert" to explain why all his witnesses are so readily demonstrated to be liars and preveracators.

Fitz lost this one big time.

[muawiyah]

I was just thinking that Fitzgerald's "strong kung fu" was so much yesterday's "kim chi".